When debonair Count Guido Chigi-Saracini was a young music student in Florence, his teachers called him "the piano smasher." Often enough, when he came to a difficult passage, he could only bang his fists down on the keyboard in frustration and rage. After a try at composing, with little more success, he decided to take his music at one remove, pay for it rather than make it himself.' Today, after 40 years of footing bills, 70-year-old Count Chigi-Saracini has a good claim to the title of Italy's No. 1 music patron. The slim, white-haired nobleman has remodeled his vast, 800-year-old palazzo...
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